Happy Ides of March everyone! Or is it Saint Patrick’s Day? Or, to be honest, Pie Day. Or is it some weird mashup of all of them. It’s a weird convolution of all these days into one glorious green-festooned ritual stabbing in the back of and drinking of Caesars and other cocktails made famous by betrayal and the shepherding of snakes off an inhospitable island.
To honour the days in question and to be effective with my time, I am going to go out on a limb with a not very well thought out listicle of the 10 individuals of renown who I think will be either led off cliff by a dancing saint with a pan flute or stabbed (metaphorically more than likely) in the back by people they once trusted. And in the interests of time – these “dispatches” will need to happen before the end of the year.
10 – Justin Trudeau. See ya later fella.
That’s right. Justin’s time is done as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and as Prime Minister. The lineup of people who wanted him gone is long. The electorate clearly wanted him gone. The general Canadian population wanted him gone. His wife is already gone. His fellow MPs wanted him gone, even if they were for the most part too chicken to say it on the record. Pierre Poilievre may or may not have wanted him gone – sometimes it’s OK to campaign against someone whose net approval ratings were approaching Shaquille O’Neal’s foot size. We all wanted him gone and finally, after the longest and most politicaly destructive farewell tour (not calling an election and proroguing parliament in the face of a national crisis), he has finally left the building and we have a shiney new populatirty cotest winning pinata to turn our collective anger at.
Last year I said Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carney would lead the classic stab in the back charge and I must say, I wasn’t too far off. Except Chrystia stabbed him in the front, not the back and Mark Carney pushed them both off a cliff. Total boss move. See ya Justin – we hardly knew ya!
9 – Mark Carney
With a name like Carney you gotta figure he’s got a bit of the blarney in him and apparently it’s true. In addition to the Canadian passport of his youth, this man possesses a United Kingdom passport as well as a coveted green Irish passport. While it remains to be seen if he has the gift of the gab courtesy of kissing the blarney stone (his speeches so far are pretty wooden) or the ability to enjoy good craic, I suppose he is our prime minster for now and he deserves his chance. Best of a bad situation since I am personally getting weary of the Doug Ford pretending to be PM act. He’s well educated, urbane, worldly, well-travelled, an economist, twice a central banker, prone to exaggeration (I mean who isn’t) and, according to his fawning acolytes “born for this moment”. Alright big fella (he’s actually not that big), this is your big chance. You’re either Saint Mark, leading all the tariff snakes out of Canada or some form of pied piper fraud.
Regardless, put on your big boy pants and prepare yourself for possibly the most frustrating negotiations and discussions of your life, because your counterparty couldn’t care less about your education, background or country for that matter. Park the condescension, roll up your sleeves and get going. Time is already a’wasting. You’ve already blown your first political test by going to Europe before Washington. Get some real advisors.
And have a Guiness, you have a two-week grace period. After that you need to come “clean” (heh!) on your carbon tax whack-a-mole flim-flammery and explain to Canadians how what you believe in (many of us have read your damn book and know) can be reconciled with actually running a country whose national wealth is at least in large part derived from that which you would withdraw. And explain you accounting hocus pocus where you split the deficit in two, call one operating and the other investment, increase the debt, spend more, collect less and call it balanced. We’re watching.
8 – Donald Trump et al
They’ve been dominating the airwaves since 2015. They have been polluting the public discourse and running their unique grift on the American people since then, aided and abetted by a chickenshit and ratings addicted mainstream media and a sycophantic Fox News whose NOT EVEN AMERICAN owner (Rupert Murdoch) would like nothing more than seeing his power consolidated and riches enhanced for the rest of his 90+ year old life (funny how he isn’t too old – might want to look into that one Sleepy Joe). No matter, this isn’t about Joe or Rupert. No, this is about the Trump clan and what will happen to them when they are done dragging the RNC and the Republican party down in flames after his most improbable re-election. Key things to consider here are actual policies such as they are like mass deportations (how’s that going?), tariffs on everything and everyone (including tariffs on tariffs – so stupid), gutting the federal workforce, turning a supposedly ketamine addicted South African billionaire and his minions loose on the federal government, alienating all of the US’s traditional allies, cozying up to Russia, abandoning Ukraine and, of course, most egregious of all, the whole annexation of Canada nonsense. Plus crashing stock markets, impending recession, etc.
Yesterday in the White House he basically told the President of Ireland that he was going to impose tariffs on Ireland. Including Guiness. Four days before Saint Patrick’s Day. All of Boston shuddered.
This is most assuredly an Ides worthy move.
I rather believe that at some point, the backlash is going to be epic and he will find himself stabbed in the back by his erstwhile supporters in the political establishment once and for all in an act of political bloodletting and much-needed rebirth. That’s politics. The whole Ides thing is about people turning on their leader when he goes too far.
7 – Tariffs
In case you hadn’t heard, tariffs are stupid. Really stupid. They crash economies, lead to tit for tat retaliation and crash economies further. The US has had two depressions since the Civil War. Each were preceded by stupidly high tariffs and tariff wars. Yet here we are. 50% tariffs on this, 25% on that. 200% on French wine, 10% on Canadian oil and electricity – products that the US has so little use for that they have the lowest tariffs of the bunch. Retaliatory tariffs on bourbon, sporting goods, furniture and gloves. No one really know how long this will go on. Probably for four years off and on unless someone can definitively park this mercantilist and misguided economic policy in the dumpster where it belongs. Stab these policies in the back and get on with it.
6 – Pierre Poilievre and his campaign team
Six months ago, Pierre and the CPC were riding high with the Axe the Tax Trudeau hate. They had it in the bag. All they needed was for chicken-shit Jagmeet to grow a spine and trigger a confidence vote. Only problem is that events caught up to them. Trump won and suddenly Canada was a target of a person and movement that, rightly or wrongly, a great many Canadians associate with the populist right wingery of Pierre and the CPC. Then Trudeau made his self-serving political exit decision, everything went on hold, we booed some anthems, got a trade war, annexation threats. everyone got fake patriotic and puffy and then we got Carneyed. The polls have flipped and now the LPC and the CPC are in a dead heat while the NDP is just dead. But poor old Pierre is still stuck in 2024. They aren’t pivoting. And I think it’s because they don’t know where to pivot to. There is a conservative movement in Canada. It needs to be harnessed. There is a mushy centre that needs to be targeted. Catchy slogans are great to beat someone everyone is done with. Faced with a renewed Liberal party and a shiny new leader who may actually bring some gravitas to the moment that isn’t drama teacher fake has Pierre on his heels. I don’t doubt that he will turn it on for an election and now that he knows what he’s facing but it’s a different battle and so far, he ain’t winning. Being opposition leader is hard, especially when there is shit going down and parliament isn’t in session. You can’t affect anything and you have to just sit and watch. Doug Ford can go to Washington and get an audience and now so can Carney. If Pierre goes, he won’t get an audience, he’ll get a label. And that label will lose him an election. While I actually think Pierre will do a better job with Trump than Carney (this is just my gut feel for how negotiations are likely to unfold), I am really quite unsure he will actually get the chance.
So – campaign team, get it together or you will get it in the back. The only thing in doubt is whether it will be before or after Pierre if he loses.
5 – Canadian Economy
I hate to tell you this, but we have a recession coming. It’s gonna be pretty deep and it’s going to hurt. Rates dropping the way they have since the Trump-a-palooza Tariff War started are a feeble counter-offensive to try and get some liquidity back in a system that has been stuck in “limp mode” for far too long. The pistons of the Canadian economic engine are filled with grit and not sweet, sweet refined bitumen. It’s not going to matter who is Prime Minister. It’s coming and it will be 100% caused by tariff action. Unfortunately, all the problems we have that haven’t been addressed while we have been trying desperately to prove our environmental bona fides on the world stage and happily mortgaging our future to provide free everything to everyone will still be around. Husing prices are going to stay high – we don’t have enough for the amount of people we have. Provincial trade barriers will take years to come down. Re-orienting export markets will take decades. Elbows up sounds great, but it gets tiring after a while. A pipeline from Alberta to the East Coast is NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN because the political will will disappear. This means the most viable export pipelines out of Alberta are a TMX expansion ad northern leg to Norh BC coast or, kill me now, reviving Keystone XL.
Stabbed in the back and led off a cliff. Sorry Canada. I apologize to my children. Ugh
4 – New York Football Fans
It must be hard to be a New York Jets fan. You are in the most dynamic media market in the world, your owner has a bazillion dollars and year after year you just can’t seem to pull it together whether it’s atrocious draft pick and head scratching wasted pick to injuries to lousy coaches to Tom Brady dominance replaced by Buffalo climbing the mountain top. It doesn’t matter. You just can’t pull it together. Then finally, a beacon of light. One of the greats, Aaron Rodgers on your team. Super Bowl aspirations! It was finally going to happen. And then just like that, it wasn’t. Everyone got fired and Rodgers was sent packing. And where is he thinking of going? To the hapless New York Football Giants, a team that is currently redefining the term “slide into irrelevance”. Could there be any scenario more Jets/Giants than Rodgers ending up on an even worse team that plays in the same stadium because he has finally got used to the commute? The Giants, whose woes began the day they STUPIDLY benched Eli Manning and broke his consecutive game streak and it has been downhill ever since. First round draft pick on second round rated Daniel Jones. Completely mismanaging their best player Saquon Barkley so badly that they let him walk in free agency FOR NOTHING and were forced to watch him have the single best season for a running back in professional football history and win a Super Bowl – less than 12 months after you decided you didn’t need him. OMG. Yes please god, make it happen. Make Rodgers pick the Giants so I can watch both franchises spontaneously combust and burn to the ground.
Fans, consider yourselves stabbed.
3 – Maple Leafs Fans
Egged on by the Toronto-centric media, Maple Leafs Fans have been conditioned to believe that this, this is the year they will finally ascend to the mountain top and win the Stanley Cup. Well, you have been tricked. Tricked by a tricky little leprechaun trickster. There are 1967 reasons why Toronto won’t win. Sorry, you have been led off the island. It is the curse of Harold Ballard.
2 – Energy Investors
It’s been a pretty volatile start to the year for energy investors broadly and oil investors more narrowly. I’m not even going to talk about natural gas even though prices are surging. This is mainly because investing in natural gas is the equivalent of going all in on a Maple Leafs Stanley Cup and Jets Super Bowl parlay bet.
But oil? Oil is where it’s at. It’s March. Turnaround season is over. Prices are rising. Demand is rising. International tensions are high. The new Trump administration is all “Drill Baby Drill” and we love energy independence and pretend Canada doesn’t matter but secretly we are dependent on Canada for 25% of the oil we refine. Whatever right? Should be bullish as all get-out. If it weren’t for these nasty tariffs that are going to raise breakevens across the Drill Baby Drill heartland. OPEC is adding barrels back into the market. Prices are stable. International tensions are maybe loosening. Prices are falling. Tariffs on steel and aluminum. Prices are falling. The Permian is slowing. Tariff induced recession means maybe demand isn’t growing so much. Rig counts are falling. Suddenly, energy investors who were self-proclaimed geniuses don’t look so smart. The Trump administration’s approach to the energy sector couldn’t be any more chaotic and counter-productice unless it was designed by someone who hates the US energy industry. It’s bonkers. You have the right guy in Chris Wright as Energy Secretary. Except he’s working for the team that can’t think straight. Trump wants to expand production, drill baby drill, have OPEC deliver more barrels, tariff Canadian oil, fill the SPR and get oil to $50 all using a resource whose break-even is miles above that. What could possibly go wrong? I’ll tell you what. Plenty. Everything.
As soon as you grow complacent about the energy market it will stab you in the back. Et tu OPEC?
1 – Elon and X and Tesla
Yeah, guess what is going to happen to Elon this year… Elon, a thin-skinned billionaire like Trump (except he has real money, not Trump bucks), is the pipe-playing St Patrick leading us all obliviously into an ocean of chaos by unleashing his vile cesspool of fake free-speech and raging right wing platforming “village square” X on an unsuspecting public. Eager to play and be entertained, we soon find ourselves all in the water. He will personally stab each and everyone of us in the back, unless we sign up for a blue check. Except Elon has a side-hustle as the actual President of the United States where he leads the DOGE team on a holy quest to locate the Holy Grail – government efficiency. He accomplishes this by deploying the same tactics that Sherman used on his march to Atlanta during the civil war – burn everything in sight. He’s had free rein for the better part of a month and pretty much everything he has touched has turned into a disaster for the Trump administration. I don’t know how much longer this can go on but I suspect it may run its course sooner than Elon thinks. Two narcissists cannot coexist for too long or its like crossing the beams in Ghostbusters. Bad things will happen. My own feeling is Trump will tire of Elon and his antics just about the time his approval ratings hit Trudeau territory, which based on trend might be in May. At which time Elon can go back to his car company, if it still even exists given how badly he is hemorrhaging sales at just the wrong time.
Of course Donald won’t do it himself. He will have his minion JD evict Elon from whatever broom closet he is sleeping in at the White House. And Vance will be more than happy to get him out. It’ll be like a palace coup.
